Current location in this text. Enter a Perseus citation to go to another section or work. Full search
options are on the right side and top of the page.

[1302b]
[1]
but because they see other men
in some cases justly and in other cases unjustly getting a larger share of them.
Other causes are insolence, fear, excessive predominance, contempt,
disproportionate growth of power; and also other modes of cause1 are election intrigue,
carelessness, pettiness, dissimilarity. Among these motives the power possessed by insolence and
gain, and their mode of operation, is almost obvious; for when the men in office
show insolence and greed, people rise in revolt against one another and against
the constitutions that afford the opportunity for such conduct; and greed
sometimes preys on private property and sometimes on common funds. It is clear
also what is the power of honor and how it can cause party faction; for men form
factions both when they are themselves dishonored and when they see others
honored; and the distribution of honors is unjust when persons are either
honored or dishonored against their deserts, just when it is according to
desert. Excessive predominance causes faction, when some individual or body of
men is greater and more powerful than is suitable to the state and the power of
the government; for such are the conditions that usually result in the rise of a
monarchy or dynasty. Owing to this
in some places they have the custom of temporary banishment,2 as at Argos and Athens;
yet it would be better to provide from the outset that there may be no persons
in the state
[20]
so greatly predominant,
than first to allow them to come into existence and afterwards to apply a
remedy. Fear is the motive of faction with those who have inflicted wrong and
are afraid of being punished, and also with those who are in danger of suffering
a wrong and wish to act in time before the wrong is inflicted, as the notables
at Rhodes banded together3 against the people because of the
law-suits that were being brought against them. Contempt is a cause of faction and of actual attacks, upon
the government, for instance in oligarchies when those who have no share in the
government are more numerous （for they think themselves the stronger
party）, and in democracies when the rich have begun to feel contempt
for the disorder and anarchy that prevails, as for example at Thebes the democracy was destroyed owing to
bad government after the battle of Oenophyta,4 and that of the Megarians was
destroyed when they had been defeated owing to disorder and anarchy,5 and at Syracuse before the tyranny6 of
Gelo, and at Rhodes7 the common people had fallen into
contempt before the rising against them. Revolutions in the constitutions also take place on
account of disproportionate growth; for just as the body8 is
composed of parts, and needs to grow proportionately in order that its symmetry
may remain, and if it does not it is spoiled, when the foot is four cubits long
and the rest of the body two spans, and sometimes it might even change into the
shape of another animal if it increased disproportionately not only in size but
also in quality,9 so also a state is composed of parts,

1 The four causes now mentioned are those
alluded to just above （1302a 38） as an addition to the
seven enumerated above, 1302a 38-b 5.

8 It is not clear whether what follows refers to a work of art
（cf. 1284b 8） or is an exaggerated account of a disease;
Galen describes one called σατυρίασις, in
which the bones of the temple swell out like satyrs' horns.

An XML version of this text is available for download,
with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted
changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.